


A Few Days Late

by Nightfeathers



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:20:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 20,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25430779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightfeathers/pseuds/Nightfeathers
Summary: Trevor arrives in Gresit a few days later than canon and finds a town already ravaged by Night Creatures. Nobody survived and the hunter is on his own.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 62





	1. Abandoned

The view outside of Gresit showed nothing but corpses and filth remaining inside the walls. An attack the week before had left him injured and slower than normal. It’d taken days longer than it should have to get there and now it seemed it might have been a wasted trip. Still there might be something edible left in the town and at this point it was worth checking. 

He snuck in through a nasty sewer pipe, cursing all the while as he climbed past the choked bodies of humans and the occasional night creature. Trevor Belmont tried not to look at the bodies any more than he had to. The sight of those lifeless bodies, usually in multiple pieces, made him sick. 

It wasn’t the blood that bothered him, nor the guts. He was used to the sight of both. Even the stench of death was so common now that it didn’t phase him. He could step past a corpse and toe his way through the blood and not blink an eye. 

What bothered him more than anything about the corpses had more to do with what they said about him than anything else. Guarding humanity was a job that his family had decided to take on hundreds of years before. It was in his blood, a part of his soul that had been drilled into him practically since birth.

It had also been ripped away thirteen years later by the very humans he’d been taught to protect. The father who’d taught him that lesson had been burned alive along with his mother and sisters. Even some of the servants had been caught up in the blaze that turned his family home into so much ruin and rubble. Difficult to care about humanity after watching his family burned to ash. Even harder was trying to come to terms with the fact that he’d been hiding in the bushes while it happened. The fact that he’d been only twelve years old, and rather small for that age by his family’s standards, never seemed to matter. If he bothered to ever think about his drinking problem that was the night it had really started, though he’d not been able to have his first drink for another few weeks. Not until he got hungry enough and cold enough and tired enough to do anything to get rid of all three, even if just for a few hours. 

The sight of those corpses reminded him of the duty he was neglecting, so he didn’t look. When he pushed the grate out of the way and emerged into the city, not a soul was stirring. He found a shop that used to be a butchers, now abandoned like the rest, and stole what he could find that looked edible and nonhuman. 

Just past the town square he found a hut that had been burned, part of the roof caved in. A lot of corpses in blue robes were laying nearby, some half burned and some almost intact. The body of a kind looking old man gazed out from the rubble as if pleading with him, but even from a distance Trevor could tell it was too late. He walked over to make sure, and hurried away when no pulse could be found. 

This town seemed filled with nothing but ghosts of what had been and what might have been. The bodies of children were more rare, but he spotted one now and again. One poor infant had been dropped onto the spire of the church. Organs that could have come from just about anyone were draped over the rooftops like bizarre decorations. 

That night Trevor Belmont made camp in one of the abandoned buildings, the one with the least holes he could find. A few night creatures snuffled about, but none found where he’d hidden himself. They didn’t seem all that enthusiastic about it. Probably because they’d already eaten everything that moved in this town, he decided. 

The next day he put what food he could find into a pouch and took it before climbing over the barrier at the entrance to the city. In a chamber that he’d never even realized existed below the streets, a scholar and a soldier both slumbered undisturbed.

  
  



	2. Alone in a Tavern

Another city left as so much ash and smoking debris decorated with the remains of its inhabitants yielded much the same results. Trevor tried to avoid seeing the bodies, but it was getting harder and harder to stop seeing the looks on what remained of their faces. 

“Don’t get involved.” He muttered to himself as he worked his way past what he thought used to be the town’s baker. The corpse was blocking the way to a back room where Trevor hoped to find some stored supplies. “Just get the food and go. Got to be a tavern somewhere in this shithole.”

Finally able to open that back door, he found a bedroom instead of a larder. Blood festooned the walls and floor as well as parts of the ceiling. Parts of the baker’s wife remained, but the cradle was blessedly empty. Trevor stared around at the leftovers of three lives and gritted his teeth before backing out. Clearly this was not the room he’d been looking for. 

Three buildings later he finally found the tavern and barricaded himself inside after tossing the barkeep’s remains out onto the street. One of the rooms had food, and the basement was stocked. It was enough to let him stay here for days without having to leave and that’s exactly what he resolved to do. 

He ate the food that belonged to a man he should have been here to save, and drank the beer that should have been earned instead of stolen. For a while it was enough to let him forget those petty little details that he refused to care about anymore. None of them had been there to save him when he needed it. None of them had stepped up to save his family when they were being murdered in their beds. 

“Why should I care?” Trevor slurred the words at his own faded reflection in the half filled glass he held. “They didn’t. It’s what they wanted, right? Murdering everyone… They deserve it, all of them.” His mind flashed back on that empty cradle. “All… all of them.” He whispered the words and downed the rest of the glass. 

“I can’t do anything anyway.” The confession hurt, even with the copious amounts of anesthetics he’d consumed. “Hoard of night creatures, bunch of vampires, Dracula himself… what the hell am I gonna do?!” 

He pulled the whip off his belt and lay it on the bar. It was a good weapon, but it wasn’t up to that kind of fight. Maybe if he had Morning Star he might have had a shot at not dying in the first thirty seconds but even then… even with the soul of his almost-ancestor fighting alongside him, what could the two of them do?

“Finish off the Belmonts. That’s what I’d do.” He muttered as he refilled the glass. When he picked it up he swirled it contemplating that idea. Would it be so bad? It was what humanity wanted. They’d enjoyed using his family well enough, and taken great delight in using Trevor himself. But in the end all they seemed to really want was for his family to die. Dracula’s great war had only spurred that desire as if the entire species was too stupid to realize the Belmonts had been their only real defense. 

Of course those same people had decided murdering Dracula’s wife was a good idea so perhaps the stupidity thing was right after all. The fact that they’d thought her to be a bride of Satan only made their judgement even worse. Or maybe it was all rumor, though Dracula having decided to wipe out humanity was true enough. 

Trevor leaned back in his chair and stared around the tavern. It looked the same as every other tavern he’d spent the last half decade drowning his sorrows in. Wooden tables, wooden chairs, animal heads on the walls. The only thing missing was the patrons to jeer at him and the wenches to try and weasel money out of him. Sometimes he’d forget which town he was in until he walked outside and passed a signpost or someone yelled at him to get out of whatever town it was. 

When he finally passed out in that chair, there was nobody around to carry him to a safer location. The soft sounds of his snoring attracted the attention of one of the night creatures that had returned to sniff out stragglers. It pawed at the boards over one of the windows, and a pointy toothed grin spread halfway around its face when the first board popped loose.


	3. Choices

The screech of the last rusted nail being pulled from one of the boards blocking out the tavern window was quickly followed by the sound of the board clattering to the floor. Trevor startled out of his sleep, reaching for one of his daggers automatically even before he’d managed to get his eyes fully open. He was just in time to see the beast crawling out of his nightmare and in through the window.

“Fucking hell!” He scrambled to grip his whip, his fingers closing around the handle just as the creature leaped at him. 

Trevor jammed the handle into its mouth as it took him to the ground and while it was howling in pain he stabbed through one of far too many armpits with his sword, After it collapsed he shoved the body off and scuttled back to lean against the bar, panting as he wound up the weapon. 

“Christ!” He wiped his face and let out a long breath that hitched partway. Pain blossomed along his side as the adrenaline began to wear off. With another muttered curse, he lifted his arm to inspect the damage and discovered he’d had a set of 3 claw marks raked into his side, and pretty damn deep too. 

Having to use some of the liquor he’d claimed on the injury was irritating but a hell of a lot better than leaving the wound to fester. Due to the potential threat of more night creatures or worse lurking around he couldn’t even scream when the burning hit. His face turned bright red and sweat broke out over his entire body, but he held the sounds back aside from a few small squeaks. Nothing was likely to have heard those, he decided, but he got a few bottles together and retreated to the food pantry just in case. The smell of all that cheese would help disguise the scent of human but there was nothing in the bar to hide the scent of his blood. 

“Better than being a sitting duck anyway.” Trevor roughly reminded himself as he shoved a barrel in front of the door. After that he made himself comfortable in the darkness sitting on a sack of what felt like potatoes and leaning back against a cask of pickles, judging by the smell. 

With nothing now to distract him, once the urge to jump at every creak faded he quickly passed out again. Day was well advanced by the time he woke for the second time, and for a moment he didn’t recognize where he was. It took a few seconds of straining his eyes to recall where the door was. He shoved the barrel out of the way and returned to the main tavern. 

The creature he’d killed remained where it had fallen. Trevor sat down in one of the tavern chairs and rubbed his forehead wishing he could do something about the ache in his head. On the other hand that at least distracted him from the pain in his side. 

Unbuttoning his shirt and pulling it off, he twisted to inspect the wound and scowled. Either the creature had carried poison in its claws or it was just filthy. Either way the wound was looking red and veiny around the edges, a sign that he was in for a bad time. Spending that time in a root cellar didn’t sound like a great way to make sure he survived. In fact, without some kind of medical attention that was looking less and less likely at all. 

Finding people to tend it seemed the obvious choice but that was risky. Anyone that knew what they were doing was going to be holed up someplace better defended than he was prepared to break into to see them. If he went to a random healer he was rolling the dice on getting someone who would shove mud or something even less helpful into the wound instead of taking care of it. Trevor might have forgotten a lot of his upbringing but that part had stuck in his head. So was it better to gamble on finding a healer that was still in one piece and knew what they were doing, or stay in the pantry and hope a demon didn’t track him down while he was delirious and that he’d survive the poisoning in the first place? 

Leaning forward in his chair, he rested his forehead in his hands. Luck hadn’t exactly shown a fondness for smiling on him. Either way he had a higher than average chance at dying. 

It would have been easy to give up. Staying in the tavern and drinking his way through the stock would have been simple. He’d probably end up passing out in the cellar and giving some poor bastard a shock when they came looking for food in here. 

Of course that was assuming there was anybody left to look for it. Humanity might have been wiped out already. Many of the towns he passed were dead or dying. For all he knew he might be the last one left. Wouldn’t that be irony at its finest, having the last of the Belmonts become the last of humanity, and him dying in a tavern in the middle of fucking nowhere? 

The thought of having to face his ancestors after a death like that left him feeling… hollow. Useless. Like a drunk who’d gotten unlucky enough to live for a little while longer than everyone else. Any one of them would have done better. They would have been able to fight back and at least died trying to help someone instead of passed out in a bar. Trevor pulled himself out of the chair and went behind the bar to grab another bottle, wanting more than anything to forget what was happening outside this building. 

Instead he stared at his reflection in the bottle. Everyone had always said he got his father’s eyes. It made looking in mirrors hard. His hair had come straight from his mother. She’d always complained about it on herself but said he looked handsome. Both of them stared out at him from every mirror he passed. 

His father’s eyes accused him. Of sitting idly by while humanity died, but of other things too. He’d abandoned the family home but he’d done worse than that. He’d turned his back on their very reason for existing. Belmonts were supposed to hunt and kill monsters. Protect humanity. That was the one thing they’d all been taught to do from the moment they opened their eyes. Guard the weak from evil, whether that evil came from themselves or from demons that wanted to turn them all into bloodstains on the ground or from Dracula himself. Now humanity faced all three, and where was the only Belmont left?

“Sitting in a fucking tavern.” Trevor’s hand dropped. “Drinking and dying. Worthless fucking life.” He brought the bottle to his lips and took a long drink before he looked into the glass again. “Shoulda been me in there.” He whispered. 


	4. Journey

The bottle crashed against the far wall, glass flying everywhere as it broke apart on impact. Trevor watched the liquid flow down the wall and when it reached the bottom he stood up.

Nobody was going to be around to bury him, much less take him home first. So he’d go home on his own. Maybe they’d forgive him then, if he could at least die protecting the hold. That had to count for something, since some of them had gone the same way. And it was better than staying here. 

After packing up what he could of the food, he grabbed a bottle for the road. Starvation wouldn’t be his death of choice. Too drawn out and painful. The liquor, as much of a treasure as it was, he reluctantly left behind. If he changed his mind he could always come back, after all. The Belmont manor wasn’t far during good times. It would take a couple days on foot since he couldn’t exactly rush and risk running into a band of roaming demons.

And of course, there would be no welcome waiting for him there. 

If he was lucky maybe the townsfolk had already been killed. That would make it easier. He wouldn’t have to face them trying to kill him during the day, or worse, looking to him for help. That wasn’t something he was prepared to do even if they had survived. Not after what they’d done.

“Bunch of murdering bastards.” The words came out harsh. Trevor scowled at the road ahead and almost turned back. “It’s their fault you know.” His voice was directed upwards to where he presumed his father liked to glare down and yell at him for not being good enough. 

“If not for them you would have been here to stop it!” He shouted without breaking stride. Walking and yelling at his dead ancestors was something he’d had a lot of practice at over the years. 

At least one of them would probably have charged right into Dracula’s castle last year after reports of the giant fiery head of Satan had trickled out of Gresit. Nobody Trevor had talked to seemed quite certain of the source of the head but it seemed obvious enough even without the thing naming itself Dracula. 

When the sun began to go down Trevor found a burned out cabin to hide out in. The scent of charred wood and smoke were still fresh but the embers seemed to be out. It was the best shelter he could find and better than sitting out in the open waiting to be attacked. 

Just before dawn he fell asleep, but this time nothing interrupted that slumber. He woke some time after dawn and packed everything up before resuming the journey. 

The closer he got to his home the less certain he was about coming back here. Going inside a church was one thing. God could set him on fire anywhere so he didn’t think it likely to actually happen. He just avoided them out of courtesy and because sometimes the sight of a priest still made him want to vomit. Setting foot in his home though, that was inviting trouble from a much more immediate source. His ancestors’ ghosts couldn’t follow him all over the country, not as far as he knew, but they would definitely be waiting there for him. They wouldn’t be pleased.

Then again, if they killed him they couldn’t very well complain about him not dying a noble death and it would save him a lot of trouble.

The journey passed quickly after that. He could only travel a short time every day. He couldn’t sleep at night without risking being attacked, and he couldn’t travel without any sleep at all. Despite a growing shakiness in his hands, he kept moving and managed to avoid getting killed, until one evening not long before dusk he found himself passing the tree that he’d once considered his own personal hold. 

Which seemed like a minor miracle but he didn’t care to question it. 

Trevor laid his hand on the rough bark of that tree and just for a moment, it was almost like coming home should have been. He expected to hear his mother or one of the servants calling him back to the house for dinner, or his father trying to find him so they could work on his training. 

He’d always found it annoying then, having them interrupt his fun. When he closed his eyes he wished as hard as he could, as hard as he ever had when he was a child and it hadn’t yet sunk in just how real it all was, that one of them would shout at him now. 

Now, just as then, only the sounds of the forest creatures around him answered his wish. He stood up and wiped his eyes before he jogged the last few meters to what had once been his home. 

Ruins rose up from the ground, the remains of walls and doorways all that was left of the house that still rose tall in his dreams on some of his worst nights. The ashes had long since been washed away by rain. Grass grew in tufts through the cracks in the stone floors. 

It felt wrong to just hop over one of the walls, so Trevor popped the stem off one of the tallest stalks of grass as he walked slowly through the front door. “I’m back.” He meant to shout it but all he could get out was a whisper.

In the center of what had once been the living room, instead of the huge stone slab he remembered he found a gaping hole. Immediately his heart felt like it was about to leap out of his chest. 

Who could have broken into the hold?! More importantly how the hell had they managed that? The slab looked like it had been shattered. As he leaned over the edge he could see the stairs spiraling downward to a shallow pool at the bottom where rain had gotten inside. Chunks of stone, all that remained of the last protection left for all the knowledge within, lay scattered on the steps and at the base. 

“No.” He whispered this time deliberately, unable to manage any more. Running to the stairs, he darted down the spiral passing the blank spot on the wall where the portrait of his family’s founder had hung for so long. 

“Why the fuck would anybody take that?!” He shouted this time as his fear began to turn to rage. 

It felt as if something had been violated just by having this place entered by anyone not in his family. To have it broken into and stolen from left him feeling like even more of a failure than ever before. 

At the bottom he stopped, staring at the door that lay partly off its hinges. Walking over to it he reluctantly pushed it open, terrified of what he would find inside. Had they set fire to it all? Destroyed the place? 

He couldn’t see at first. It was too dark to know. Trevor fumbled with the flint as he lit one of the torches on the wall and froze when the light finally made its way out. Eyes wide, he backed up against the wall and slid down to the floor. 

Tears filled his eyes, not from the motes of dust that settled to the floor ahead of him but because of the empty shelves that were all that remained of the most important work his entire family had devoted their lives to creating. 

Not a single page, not a single nearly sacred item remained of that collection. The Belmont hold had been stripped clean. 


	5. Old Friend

The shock of finding an empty room instead of the library that should have been here kept him in place for a little longer before he forced himself back to his feet. Maybe whoever had come here had missed something. It wasn’t all on display after all. He remembered hidden chambers, little nooks and crannies where smaller things might be hidden as an added measure of security. There had to be something left.

Trevor started his search on the upper floors, tapping on walls and feeling the bookshelves for hidden latched and pressure points. The library had been massive so it went slowly but at this point he didn’t know where else to go. All his plans had hinged on returning here to make use of medical supplies that doubtless some asshole had thrown out as worthless or tried to put in a stew. 

Did they even know what they had done in taking this place apart, he wondered. Could they read the books at all? Or did they just see the coins they could make selling books and care nothing at all for the knowledge that had been lost?

The thought of some peasant using the books to light a fire caused Trevor physical pain in his chest. Yet the idea of them falling into the wrong hands might have been worse. To have the knowledge his family had poured their seat and blood into trying to accumulate used to hurt people would be the ultimate betrayal of his legacy and their memory. 

Giving his head a shake, he tried to pull his mind away from either idea. “Focus.” He reminded himself as he picked up the search again. “There has to be something left.”

Several hot and tiring hours of searching later, Trevor sat on the bottom steps and put his head in his hands. So far he’d come up with a single bottle of holy water that appeared to have been half drunk, and he was tempted to finish it off because his mouth was dry as hell. The torch he carried in his off hand dipped as he looked around.

Suddenly a flash of light caught his eye.

Trevor jumped up and the flash ceased. Quickly he dropped back down and moved the torch, slowly adjusting the position until he saw it again and pinpointed the location. Then he rushed over to the wall where part of the plaster had crumbled away. The crack was small enough to remain unnoticed in his previous pass and at knee height which was how he’d missed it before. 

A kick of his boot had his foot sinking halfway into the wall. Trevor dropped to his knees and began digging the chunks out, pulling them away with his bare hands. Whatever was left in there didn’t matter. It was all that remained and he couldn’t leave here without it. Even if it was some useless pair of old boots or more of the damn holy water it was better than leaving empty handed. Before long he’d cleared a large enough hole that he could see inside the wall.

For a moment, his father stared back at him from that hidden chamber.

“Fucking hell.” Trevor muttered, reaching into the hold to see if there was anything besides the bloody distance mirror tucked into the cache. 

After feeling a case lying just beneath the hole he’d already made, Trevor set about making it bigger. He pulled the chest out, set his torch to the side, and used his boot to kick off the lock so he could open it. 

What lay inside gleamed silver as if it had only just been made. Trevor licked his lips and stared at the Morning Star whip before reverently drawing it out of the chest. It felt heavy in his hands and not just from the weight of the metal. 

“Am I old enough now, papa?” He asked softly, a repeat of a phrase he’d often uttered as a child. “I fucking hope so.” He added with a snort, and turned away from the wall to try the chain whip out. “Otherwise we’re all fucking screwed.” Casting it out, he wrapped it around the stairs’ railing on the next level up and then unwrapped and coiled it back.

The moment was made a lot less impressive by the way he listed to one side during the cast. The injury in his ribs was slightly healed, but only slightly. It also burned now, though it was hard to say if that was just the wound or his entire body. Trevor sat down on the chest contemplating the weapon he’d found. 

Maybe it would have been better to leave it hidden. Someone might have found it later who could do some good with it. 


	6. Ghosts

The Morning Star whip lay draped on a bookshelf in front of a chair Trevor had dragged over. Despite his own presumed uselessness he didn’t want to let the thing out of his sight. Of all the things, all the knowledge this library had once contained, this might be the most important part of it all. It had been with his family since Leon’s fiance had made the weapon and imbued it with her own soul. It had allowed his family to defeat countless numbers of evil creatures, beasts that would have devoured them and any other human with malicious joy at the first opportunity. 

Contemplating the weapon reminded him of the portrait missing from the hall. The thing had been hanging there for as long as he could remember. As far as he knew it hadn’t been moved since Leon himself hung it there. One more violation of a home he’d tried to forget, and now it ate at him along with the rest. 

“Where did you end up? Some peasant decorating their bedroom?” Trevor directed the question skyward but his eyes remained fixed on the weapon. He couldn’t just leave it here. Whoever took the rest might return, or some other rats could show up looking for crumbs. It had to come with him.

Slowly, Trevor reached out to wrap his fingers around the handle. It felt… strange. Almost warm in his hand. His grip tightened and he decided it definitely felt warm, but not unpleasant. In fact it was almost… comforting. 

Quickly drawing the weapon up into a loop, he fastened it to his belt. Whatever else happened, he was taking this with him for all the good it would do. 

Tapping into the food stores he’d brought a little bit later made him realize how little he really had here. Sure he was home, but when home had neither water nor food you couldn’t hang around no matter how much you might want to. Since he felt skittish just being on the property, he decided to try the town. With any luck it’d be just as abandoned as the rest of the country seemed.

Before he bothered with that, however, he desperately needed a full nights sleep and the hold was probably the only place on earth he might actually get it. Walking back to the doorway, he folded his arms and stared at it for several moments. It didn’t have a lock, but he’d have to secure it somehow. Since it opened outward he couldn’t just wedge it shut either.

In the end he dragged one of the nearby bookcases over in front of the entrance. It wouldn’t hold up to intruders, but it didn’t really have to. All he needed was a warning that someone was trying to break in. That would give him the chance to wake up and deal with whatever it might be. 

With that problem solved for now, Trevor pulled a long bench as close to the door as he could get it without having to go up the stairs. He then lay down and passed out almost at once. In his sleep his fist curled around the handle of the Morning Star, and some of the tension that still suffused his expression began to ease.

Startled awake, Trevor jerked up from the makeshift bed and had Morning Star halfway out of it’s loop, the button already undone, when he finally recognized where he’d awakened. Still in the hold, with nothing but the whip in his hand to show for centuries of his family’s legacy. Apparently nothing had decided to come looking for some pickled Belmont in the night.

With a groan he swung around and rubbed his face. No water in the hold meant he’d have to leave if he wanted to get a drink. Although he didn’t suffer from hangovers as far as he was aware, he could still feel how dry his mouth was. 

Outside, sunlight streamed down into the clearing where the manor had once stood. The stones were warm as he passed by, dragging his hand over the remains. The well wasn’t far, but dread of facing that spot slowed his steps so it took him almost ten minutes to make it there. As it came into view he thought for a moment he saw his mother there beckoning him. 

Trevor leaned over the edge of the well to gaze into the water far below. It was still as clear as ever. The scent of the well itself, like a clean forest without the hints of pine, was just as familiar as the voice he heard in his head of his father cautioning him not to lean over the side to smell it. ‘You’ll fall in and drown’ the man had always said, ‘And then what’ll the rest of us drink?’. Usually his sisters would tease him about trying to make Belmont soup. He’d laughed but he could remember how cautious his mother was and it made him wonder if it was more than just a caution.

Not that anyone remained to ask now. All the family history had been stored in the library and now… now it was scattered to the winds. What wasn’t already destroyed likely would be, before too many more years had passed. Everything his family had given their lives to find out, stolen away by looters. 

Pain in his fingers made him realize they were clenched on the stone. He forced himself to let go. “Maybe I should have just leaned over a little further.” He muttered. “Not doing shit here now.” He pulled the bucket up and got a drink before letting it splash back down again. 


	7. Failures

That evening when he returned to the hold he’d managed to locate a couple of animals to turn into food. Rats weren’t ordinarily something he’d turn to, but the night creatures had made proper game scarce. Turned into jerky they weren’t the worst thing he’d eaten but it was more the uncomfortable thought of what they’d been eating for the last few weeks that made him wary. Still it was better than nothing and the food he’d scavenged would only last for so long. He hung them up dry but it was already obvious he was going to have to leave. 

That he was reluctant to do so was the strange part. The only thing this place held for him now was memories and most of those were so tainted by what had come later that they couldn’t do anything but make him wish he’d brought the alcohol instead of the food with him from that tavern. What good did being reminded of the people he’d lost do him?

Until he was ready to sleep the only thing he had to do down here now was walk, so he did until he’d come around the entire hold twice. At the hole he’d made in the wall he finally stopped and looked in at the mirror.

Not exactly the best view in the kingdom, but the sight of his own face might have been the least difficult thing to look at in the place. Those empty shelves haunted him and stole his breath every time he stared at one for too long. Small circles of dust, not as much as he would have expected after thirteen years of disuse, marked the places where everything had once sat. Counting them, which he’d caught himself doing without even realizing it, made his gut clench at the magnitude of what had been destroyed.

Trevor ran his fingers around the rim, trying to recall how the damn things worked. He knew you could travel with them. That you had to tell it where you wanted to go. But he’d never been allowed to use one as a child. His father feared he’d use it to run off to some distant land and be lost forever. With the books all gone there was no way for him to look it up either. 

This one had been smashed to pieces in a couple of spots too, as if someone had punched it hard with a fist. “Prob’ly doesn’t work anyway.” Trevor muttered, though he wondered for a moment who had first broken the mirror and when. “Maybe that’s where our shit luck came from. Seven years is about right. Or is it fourteen for breaking it twice…?” His fingers traced the cracks until one of them sliced a small cut into his finger. 

“Ah fuck.” The pain wasn’t bad, but he had enough injuries that needed tending already. 

The surface of the mirror rippled, just a little. Trevor’s attention was immediately caught by it. The disruption continued until he could make out what looked like a town. It was sort of familiar but he couldn’t be sure since he’d seen so many that looked a lot alike. The view zoomed in closer once, twice, until it focused on a single room and then what was left of a corpse within. 

That was a face he knew alright. The last time he’d bothered paying for it was weeks ago before hell broke loose. She was scattered in pieces now. He could still remember the relative warmth and the way she’d spoken to him. She’d been kind, more so than most. Even if she was being paid for it, he’d still felt a little better for a while. 

Her image vanished when he wished for it to go away though he’d not said anything out loud. Trevor turned away and wiped at the tears falling down his cheeks. They weren’t just for her, but for all the bodies he’d seen since he’d been with her. All the people he’d failed began to file through his mind reminding him of everything he’d been trying to ignore. 

“What the fuck am I supposed to do?!” He shouted at the empty air and almost put a third set of cracks in the mirror. 

Yet instead of hitting it he touched the surface again, trying to get a different picture to show. When the thing refused to respond, instead stubbornly reflecting the barren room behind him, Trevor shoved his injured finger against the glass. “Just show me where the damn castle is!”

The image in the mirror this time was first from so far above that Trevor had a hard time placing it. It drew in closer, and then closer still. Soon enough it stopped on a road sign that he could recognize and then the town itself and there it was. Dracula’s castle sitting next to the river and looking for all the world like it had been there for centuries.

Aside from the flattened landscape around it of course. 

Trevor gritted his teeth and turned away. So now he knew where it was. It didn’t change anything. Charging in there was a sure way to get himself killed. It wasn’t as if he could just stroll in and ask Dracula nicely to please stop killing all of humanity. 

Well... he could ask. The thought of the look it would put on the vampire’s face made him snort in what was almost laughter. Maybe he’d get lucky and the monster would keel over from his face breaking.

He caught sight of the broken mirror and shook his head. He’d never been that lucky in his entire life. 

Leaving the mirror behind for now, Trevor returned to his makeshift bed and lay down. A blanket would have been nice, but even the banners with his family crest had been stolen out of the hold by whomever had taken the rest. All he could do was unwrap the red cloth he kept at his waist and lay his cloak on top of that. Neither smelled the best anymore but he’d stopped noticing or caring a long time ago. 

That night, he couldn’t sleep. Thoughts of the castle and its occupant refused to let him rest. Instead his mind insisted on trying to come up with a strategy that would let him get inside the castle and get to Dracula before he got any more holes punched into him. 

Which was a stupid thing to think about because he wasn’t going to the castle. It was a suicide mission. The best case scenario would be killing Dracula right before he succumbed to not only the festering wound in his side but whatever other injuries the vampire inflicted during this mythical fight that he somehow survived long enough to finish. 

"Sleep." He growled at himself. "Go the fuck to sleep." Trevor rolled over to one side and pulled his cape a little tighter around himself. 


	8. Mortal Coil

Somewhere in the night among the other jumbled thoughts that crowded into his brain, it became obvious to Trevor that he had to go to the castle. After all, he was going to die anyway along with the rest of humanity. There was nobody left to oppose the king of vampires , not once he himself was gone especially. 

And what better way to finally cast off this mortal coil than in a fight with his family’s greatest enemy?

At least they wouldn’t be able to say he hadn’t tried. Maybe he’d even weaken the vampire. It might give humanity a few extra days, which at this point was all he could hope for. Nobody else would show up to finish Dracula off but at least it would be one last hurrah before they all faded into the darkness of death. 

When Trevor awoke the next morning he packed up what little he had brought with him to this place. Without the books, it had become little more than a tomb, and one he would never be buried in at that. AS he began to leave the remains of the library however, he put a hand on the jamb, hesitating with the last step he’d ever take in his family’s home. 

His family’s home… Nothing remained now. Not a scrap of evidence of their lives, and very little of their deaths. Not even the banners with the crest on it to speak to the people who’d once lived here. 

On impulse Trevor pulled a knife out and began to carve into the wooden frame that held the door in place. It wasn’t stone, so it wouldn’t last forever. But still maybe the next time someone fell into this hole, they’d see it and know who had built it. 

The letters were a little crooked. He’d not found a reason to practice writing since the last time he’d lived in this place. But he’d done plenty of reading, of tavern signs and road signs, anything he could find to retain the letters he could still remember his parents teaching him so persistently. It’d been important to them that he learn them along with the languages they all used. 

This was the first time he could remember his own handwriting feeling important. Trevor ran his fingers over the single name he’d carved into the wood. It felt better, leaving this one thing here to mark the place his family had lived for so long. Not good, but… better. If he’d had the skill he would have put on the family crest too, but there wasn’t time for anything so elaborate. The family name would have to do.

After that was done he pulled the door shut carefully, hefted the bag onto his back again, and hiked up the staircase. His side was aching again, but the pain in his chest at leaving this place distracted him enough that he stopped noticing for a while. As he stepped through the doorway of the house itself, for one single moment he could almost imagine it all as it had once been, rising tall and whole behind him and filled with family and friends, 

Because of that illusion, he refused to look back at the house. This way he could almost pretend he was going off on a mission the way his father had done. If not for the constant pain in his side, with which his mother would never have let him leave the house, he could almost imagine them all standing behind him waving as they saw him off. 

At the first fork in the road, he looked back the way he’d come from several days before. That way lay a place of relative safety, at least until the food ran out. He could return to the tavern. Hole up in the larder. Eat all that was left and then… And then? Maybe drink himself to death if he was lucky, or at least put himself in deep enough of an alcohol heavy sleep that he didn’t feel it when the night creatures found him.

With a slight shake of his head, Trevor Belmont turned away from that option. It would be an easy death, but if there was any kind of afterlife awaiting him the way his family had always believed, such a place would be hell for him no matter which path he was sent along. The way he chose might be a faster way to die anyway.

Much like the path to his family home, the path to the castle took longer than he would have liked. Moving during the day, staying awake at night, constantly guarding himself from attack, all of these took their toll. The last thing he wanted after all the trouble he’d gone through was to die at the claws of some nameless night creature before he even arrived at the castle. 

More than once Trevor had to hide from them. The pain in his side grew with each passing day. Whether it was poison or infection, it grew slowly enough that he finally saw the spires of the castle in the distance. Unfortunately by the time that sight graced him, he was walking bent over and clutching at his side. 

That he was going to the castle to die was no longer a question. He could still fight better than the average peasant, but the only way anyone could defeat Dracula was by fighting like the best of the Belmonts. Unfortunately for all of humanity, the best of the Belmonts was beginning to have trouble walking. 

The sun was past its zenith but still in the sky when he reached the front doors of the castle. There seemed little reason to try sneaking in from some hidden entrance. The injury on his side stank enough that even Trevor could smell it. The vampire wouldn’t be able to miss it. A second or two of surprise wouldn’t help him win this fight even if he could hide that and still move without alerting everyone to his presence. 

When he tried to open the doors, Trevor encountered the first obstacle to his plan. Not only were they huge, they seemed to be locked tight. He pulled on them as hard as he could, tried prying them apart with his knife, and when that failed he leaned his forehead against the door, panting heavily. 

How the fuck was he supposed to find his glorious death if he couldn’t get the damn door open? 

In desperation he flipped the knife in his hand around and beat on the door with the pommel. If he didn’t care about surprising the damn vampire then there was no need to break in. Having Dracula invite him in would work just as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies if you got a double notification. This one posted the first time while missing part of the chapter.


	9. Surprise

The sound of his banging on the door echoed inside. Trevor could barely hear it. His body had started feeling heavy, like the miles had finally begun to catch up with him. He turned around, leaning back against the doors and slowly sinking down. Between the pain in his side and sheer exhaustion staying on his feet seemed like too much effort. 

_ This is just my kind of shit luck. _ He shook his head at the thought.  _ Can’t even get myself fucking killed right.  _

Instead of facing Dracula and going out in one last fight that might have afforded him a modicum of dignity, he was going to sit here on Dracula’s step and die like a baby abandoned on the wrong step. He leaned back against the heavy wooden door and stared up at the sky. The stars weren’t out yet, but the moon was already there. Trevor shivered in the light breeze that caressed his exposed skin as he stared up at the shape of it in the sky.

Before he had the chance to do much more, the door opened behind him and he fell backwards, landing with a soft oof. It wasn’t far enough to do any damage, but he winced and clutched at his injured side before his training took over and he scrambled for the dagger at his side.

Above him, a dark skinned man with spots and stripes tattooed onto his face stared down with an unreadable expression. Trevor pointed the dagger at him but confusion kept him from attacking right away. “You’re not Dracula.”

“No.” The man answered, one brow lifting slightly. The implication was clear. What sort of human decided to invade Dracula’s castle with a small dagger in hand? 

Trevor struggled back to his feet, his injury slowing him down considerably. Somehow he hadn’t felt embarrassed by the state he was in up until now, but facing this man made him feel absolutely useless again. “So where the fuck is he?” He snapped.

Isaac stood up straight as their unexpected visitor got to his feet. “Not here.” He answered tersely. “Why do you wish to see him?” His gaze was on the dagger. 

“I’m here to kill him.” Seeing no reason to hide his intentions, Trevor readied the knife in his hand, the other occupying itself with covering the wound in his side. Even he could feel how he swayed on his feet and he forced it to stop. The whip would have been his preferred weapon for something like this but not being able to properly bend would seriously hinder his ability to use it. The knife would do well enough.

Though it seemed impossible, Isaac’s brow rose even higher. After the attack through which his master had recently suffered, this one seemed almost laughable. However it still needed to be dealt with. The vampire hadn’t been seriously injured but that didn’t mean Isaac would leave any potential threat to him roaming around the castle, not even one as pitifully armed as this one.

“I think not.” Isaac shook his head. He drew his hand back, in it the studded leather tool he’d used to dispatch other enemies of his master. Before the points could land on this strange human, his master’s voice rang out and arrested the motion. 

“Stop.” Dracula didn’t raise his voice, but it rang through the grand hallway just the same.

Both Belmont and Isaac turned to look at the stairs. Behind Trevor, the door to the castle slammed shut, blocking off the light. At the same time, the vampire descended the stairs with slow steps, his eyes never leaving the new addition to his castle. When he stopped just behind Isaac Trevor realized just how tall he was when he had to look  _ up  _ to see his face.

“Lord Dracula, this man says he’s come here to kill you.” Isaac explained. “I was just about to take care of him so that you would not be troubled.”

“Thank you, Isaac.” Dracula answered in subdued tones, his gaze traveling over Trevor from head to toe slowly. “You must be the Belmont.”

Privately Isaac thought the human must be a fool, but he kept the thought to himself. 

Trevor thumbed the whip free of its catch. Trying to use the knife would mean instant death. Getting that close would mean there was no way to avoid Dracula’s incredibly long reach. Painful or not, the whip was the only thing he had that might give him a chance. 

“The Morning Star.” Surprise colored the vampire’s voice. “I thought it was lost...”

“Not fucking yet!” Trevor brought his arm back and winced, quickly switching hands.

Dracula’s gaze flicked to his forgemaster and back. “Isaac… leave us.”

In surprise at being dismissed when a clear threat had been made, Isaac opened his mouth to protest. A red glazed glare stopped the words in his throat. “Very well, master.” He bowed slightly and stepped back, passing out through one of the many doors leading off the hall. 

Once more surprised by the move, Trevor watched him go before sending the Morning Star whip cracking towards his opponent. The aim was spoiled by the way his body hitched, refusing to move the way he told it to because of the tightness around the wound. He twisted to correct it with his foot, sending the tip flying towards his foe. 

Knowing the effects the whip could have on him, Vlad dodged the attack, but he took note of the way Trevor had moved. The injury would have been obvious to any human, much less someone used to observing the minutiae of the human body.

Trevor drew the handle of the whip back and forth in front of his body, bringing the end around to where he wanted it before letting it loose again. It flew towards Vlad who was forced to use his claws to knock it away. Trevor was already panting, a sheen of sweat covering his body which could have come from exertion or the fever ripping through him. He drew the whip around, waving the end he held in patterns that seemed meaningless to the vampires whom he was only just now realizing crowded around them. 

Other details began to filter in too, now that he’d adjusted to the relative darkness of the castle. The floor was soaked, and he could smell mildew in the air. A layer of dust covered the floor as well, thicker in some places than in others. The lights were flickering but not in the way that flames might move. It was more like they kept going on and off again in random patterns.

“Someone else attacked this place!” Trevor reached the conclusion aloud without breaking off his attack. 

Vlad used the distraction as a chance to grab the whip just behind the blessed tip. He jerked it forward, pulling Trevor off his feet. 

“You’re injured.” Vlad commented as he watched how Belmont clutched his side instead of immediately jumping up. 

“Still more than capable of finishing you off!” Trevor tried to recall the whip and when he couldn’t he pulled out a sword, using the momentum from the pull to get back to his feet and run at his foe. 

Vlad met him with his claws, catching the blade. This time Trevor pulled it away before the vampire could get a proper grip. He attacked again and Vlad let the blade strike. The vampire’s fist made contact with the side he’d seen Belmont clutching at. Pain made Trevor black out before he even got the chance to think beyond wishing he’d made it last a little longer.


	10. Last of the Belmonts

The first thing Trevor noticed was that he was still alive. He could feel his heart thumping away in his chest, the slight bite of cool air as he sucked it into his lungs and the relative warmth as it was expelled from them a few moments later. His eyes remained shut, feigning sleep while he tried to figure out where he was and why he was still breathing at all. 

“You’re wasting your time.” The voice belonged to the human he’d seen when he’d fallen into the castle. “I know you are awake.”

Trevor cursed under his breath and opened his eyes. Only after he tried to sit up did he realize that he wasn’t chained down, and that sitting up so quickly was a very bad idea. He leaned over to one side and retched, though very little came up. He hadn’t eaten in so long there wasn’t much to lose, though it did afford him the chance to check himself for fangs just in case.

“Do not get up.” Isaac cautioned. “Lord Dracula said your injuries were extensive and that your blood was poisoned. You were evidently very close to death.”

“Izzat why I’m still alive?” Trevor mumbled and coughed, clearing his throat of some of the dryness that made his mouth feel so fuzzy. 

“I do not know why has chosen to spare you.” Isaac’s expression betrayed his confusion over the matter, but he masked it quickly. “Be grateful he has done so and lie down.”

“Like fuck I will.” Trevor rolled to one side. If he couldn’t walk he’d damn well crawl out of that room. Unfortunately he didn’t realize he’d been lying on a fairly high table. When he crashed to the floor he passed out again.

The next time he woke he didn’t try to hide that fact. The room was darkened now. At first he thought he was alone but when he tried to sit up, a pair of overly large hands easily forced him back down again. 

“Stay in bed, Belmont.” 

Vlad’s voice came from far too close. Trevor tried to roll away only to be caught again. 

“If I wanted to kill you I would have done so during the last two days while you’ve been sleeping in my castle.” Vlad forced him to lie down again. “Rest, or I will put you to sleep again.”

For the moment he seemed to have very little choice. Trevor let out a huff and lay back. The bed was soft enough. It would have been the most comfortable place he’d put his head in over a decade if not for the location. “Why didn’t you kill me?” It came out more demand than question.

“Would you prefer it if I had?” The question came from somewhere to his left.

“If you’re gonna talk to me at least turn on some fucking lights so I can see you.” Trevor groused. “It’s dark as hell in here.” Before he finished the second sentence the light in the room grew brighter in a smooth process he couldn’t begin to understand. 

“Better?” The vampire’s gaze seemed to be resting somewhere on his chest.

“Yeah…” Trevor had to bite back a thank you. He’d been raised with manners and most of them he’d lost, but that one seemed to have made it longer than most. However he refused to thank fucking Dracula for anything.

“You didn’t answer my question.” Vlad prompted. 

“What question?” Trevor turned his head to glare at the vampire. Maybe if he stared hard enough he could make Dracula’s head explode out of sheer hatred…

“Would you prefer it if I’d killed you?” Vlad asked again.

“What kinda stupid fucking question is that?” Trevor demanded. 

“You did knock on my door and announce your intentions to kill me while you could barely walk.” Vlad answered mildly. “That doesn’t seem like the actions of a man who wants to live.”

“Didn’t think I’d pass out before I finished you off, that’s all.” Trevor snapped. “Soon as I recover I’ll finish the job.”

“With what weapons?” Vlad asked, the corner of his mouth shifting slightly.

Trevor immediately felt around his body and realized that not only were his weapons gone but he’d been put into a completely different set of clothes. “Where is my whip? What did you do with my clothes?!” He demanded, trying to sit up again.

Vlad immediately pushed him back down. “The Morning Star has been moved to the Belmont library. Your clothes are being cleaned. They are particularly... pungent.”

“Belmont library’s toast.” Trevor growled. “Some fucking asshole broke in and ransacked... Wait how do you know about it?”

The laugh that drew from the vampire was very brief and quite dry. “I wasn’t referring to that hole in the ground, Belmont. I retrieved the library from that place myself. The only thing I couldn’t find was the Morning Star. It is… back where it belongs, now.”

“You?!” Trevor fell back against the bed, his mind reeling as images of his family’s library empty and abandoned returned to it. “You took it?!”

“Every last volume and blessed trinket.” Vlad confirmed with a slight incline of his head. “I added them onto my castle. I couldn’t very well leave such things lying about for some peasant to find and attempt to use against me. I had intended to return to search again for the whip but I was… distracted.”

“Why didn’t you burn it?” There was more disbelief than demand in Trevor’s question now. 

“Are you complaining?” Vlad sounded almost amused.

“Yes!” Trevor’s voice softened. “Or… no? I don’t… It doesn’t belong to you!”

“I had assumed the Belmont family to be extinct.” Vlad answered in curiously soft tones. “I didn’t realize there were any family members left to reclaim it.”

“Well there are!” Trevor snapped. “So you can put it all back!”

“And leave it to rot?” Vlad lifted a brow slightly. “No, it’s better to keep it with me. You lack the resources to maintain it.”

“Is there a reason you keep staring at my chest?” Trevor could feel his blood pounding in his ears. “What are you doing, listening to my heart or something?”

“Yes.” Vlad answered, the location of his gaze unchanging. “Your injury was badly infected. I believe you’ve pulled out of the worst of it now but you are still very ill. After you collapsed it seemed to grow rapidly worse. I was forced to keep Morning Star by your side for several days while you slept.”

Trevor blinked a few times in confusion. “What? Why? I thought you didn’t trust me with it?”

“It was sustaining your life.” Vlad frowned slightly. “Were you not aware? The creator of the whip imbued it with the power of healing and… for lack of a better term fortitude for the owner. It makes whoever holds the weapon, as long as they are of Belmont decent, stronger, faster, and better able to heal from injuries as well as toxins.” He paused. “Did you never wonder why you lasted as long as you did with such a festering wound? Without Morning Star at your side I imagine you’d have died long before you reached my door.”

“My father never told me anything about it doing that.” Trevor scoffed. “Why would I believe you anyway? You’re the one that whip was designed to kill.”

“The ability to injure me was incidental.” Vlad waved a hand in dismissal. “It was simply designed to be strong enough to allow the one who held it to kill any vampire. If it can injure me, then it can fulfill that purpose.”

“Yeah sure.” Trevor laughed and immediately regretted it, falling back against the pillow. “Fuck! What the fuck did you do to me?! It hurts worse than it did before!”

“That’s because the remaining tissue is alive and healing.” Vlad remarked, standing up just enough to tug the blanket back into place. “You suffered a great deal of damage, Belmont. I had to remove some dead skin and muscle from the area. The creature that attacked you had poison in its claws, a slow acting one luckily for you but potent just the same.”

“Why?” Trevor asked through clenched teeth.

“Because it would have injured you further to leave it.” Vlad answered. 

“You know that’s not what I meant.” The pain finally started to ease as he lay back. Trevor began to relax a little after it passed. “You could have let me die. Woulda been one less obstacle in the way of your fucking war. So why save me at all?”

“You are the last of the Belmonts.” Vlad replied as if that explained everything.

In fact it explained nothing. “That doesn’t make it any clearer.” Trevor glared. “Come on. You obviously want me alive. You might as well tell me why. Planning on parading me around in chains or did you just want to kill me yourself?”

“Neither.” Vlad answered and frowned slightly. “Your wound is bleeding again. I’ll need to rebandage it. I think it best you aren’t awake for this.”

Before Trevor could protest Vlad waved a hand over his face. He fell at once into a deep sleep.


	11. Lapdogs

The next time Trevor awoke he jumped halfway up, fists ready to punch a vampire in the face, before he even had his eyes open. Realizing he was alone made it marginally less embarrassing. He sat up in bed and noticed at once that he was not only able to do so with very little difficulty, it wasn’t nearly so painful. An experimental twist of his upper body proved that he was still injured so he hadn’t been asleep that long, but it had definitely been a few days at least. 

Evidently Dracula really did want him alive. The thought of the purpose behind that had him swinging his legs over the side of the bed in a hurry. He had to find Morning Star, and then get the hell out of here. Or attack Dracula properly so he could either stop this damn war on humanity or join the ranks of its victims. Either way sitting here in this ridiculously plush bed was not part of the plan. 

His feet ached for a moment when they hit the, again, overly luxurious rug that covered the floor. It had been a while since he’d walked without a limp, since before the tavern anyway. Trevor stood there while a wave of dizziness passed, mainly because he didn’t want to fall and alert whoever the vampire had left to guard him. There was likely some sort of beast sitting outside his door. He’d need to get the drop on the thing to kill it before it alerted the whole castle. 

Softly creeping to the entrance, he eased the door handle around. Thankfully the king of vampires kept the metal works of the castle well oiled. It didn’t creak to give him away. 

Abruptly Trevor yanked the door open. He had an arm around the throat of his guard and said guard pinned to the wall before he realized he was holding onto a perfectly normal human man. One who wore Dracula’s colors but seemed woefully unable to defend himself from this attack as rather than fighting back he just squirmed and tried to break free in almost the way a child would. 

A small dog latched onto Trevor’s pants leg, tugging the cloth ineffectually. Trevor ignored it. “Who the hell are you? Why are you in Dracula’s castle?!” He demanded in a hiss.

“Hector.” The man wheezed out as he pulled at Trevor’s arm. “Lord Dracula wanted my help.” He coughed and pulled again. Normally he’d consider himself fairly strong but Belmont’s arm seemed made of iron even with his recent illness. “Let me go, please!”

The little dog yapped, but whether it was intended as a threat Trevor wasn’t sure. His grip relaxed as he took in the fact that this one lone human seemed to be the only guard outside of his… well calling it a cell wasn’t really appropriate as there didn’t seem to be any sort of lock on the door. He released Hector’s throat somewhat reluctantly. The man was working for Dracula but he seemed to be harmless at the moment. It would have felt too much like cold blooded murder to kill him now. 

Hector rubbed his neck and then straightened his shirt. Caesar was bouncing at his heels so he picked the little dog up and patted his head. “Dracula said I was to stay here in case you woke up. He said you’d be hungry.”

“I’m fucking starving.” Trevor groused. “But I’d trust it more if that wall opened up and revealed a freshly cooked chicken than I would anything a vampire’s lacky made for me.”

Something rumbled deep inside the castle. For just a second Trevor stared at the wall as if it might actually open up, but nothing happened. He cleared his throat. “Is there a kitchen in this hell spawned death trap?”

“Of course. Lisa was human.” Hector pointed out.

“Right.” Trevor looked around slowly. The upper recesses of the walls were bathed in shadow even with the false torches lining the upper part. Suits of armor and strange statues guarded the hall. The walls were painted some combination of blood red and black, with little in the way of decoration to relieve the sharp, angular lines of it all. 

Guessing what the hunter must be thinking, Hector shook his head. “It didn’t look like this when she was here. Come on.”

As he was currently unarmed, Trevor followed behind the man far enough away that if he’d spotted the chance he could have run. However with no weapons, not even a pair of shoes, and no real idea of where he was going there didn’t seem much point. Even the suits of armor on the halls lacked anything he could use as a weapon on the off chance he wanted to try stealing from statues that seemed to be watching him every second he was in view.

Very soon the pair came to a set of double doors which Hector opened easily. Inside was quite possibly the last thing Trevor would ever have expected to see in this place. It was a small kitchen compared to the rest of the castle, but it didn’t feel cramped. In fact he couldn’t recall ever seeing a room that felt quite so inviting in his life. It felt like he was intruding when he stepped inside, though his guide seemed fine with the entry. 

“You’ll find more perishable items in that cabinet there.” Hector pointed to a large metal door built into the wall. “He said you should make whatever you like. I’ll help you as much as I can. I’m not the best cook, but…”

“You’ve been carrying a dog with half a face. I think I’d rather make it myself.” Trevor pointed out, eying Caesar warily. “What is that thing?”

“My pet.” Hector drew the little dog closer, protective over the animal. “He was killed by… It wasn’t right. So I brought him back. He’s harmless. He’s just a little dog.”

“He’s a little  _ dead _ dog.” Trevor countered though he didn’t have a lot of conviction in the condemnation. A lapdog, zombified or otherwise, was the least of his worries in this place. He rummaged around the kitchen seeing what was available, and being momentarily surprised by how cold that metal cabinet was, before he finally lit a fire in the oven to start cooking. 

Caesar barked at that moment as if to refute the ‘dead’ accusation, tail thumping wildly. Hector let him down when it seemed the hunter didn’t plan to try and kill the pup. 

“Is that what you do? Bring animals to life?” Trevor asked absently while he stirred a pot. 

“Sometimes.” Hector answered. “Usually they’re a little bigger… You’re not going to attack me again are you?”

“Not right now. Busy.” Trevor grunted and threw in some more herbs to the pot. “So why are you here? Where’s Dracula?” He spoke the words with disbelief, wondering if his memory of the last time he’d awakened could have been a fever dream.

“I don’t know. He just asked me to wait for you.” Hector answered, easing closer to the pot which was beginning to boil. “That smells good, what is it?”

“Soup.” Trevor answered, stirring the pot a little more. “Or stew. Not sure. So Vlad fucking Dracula walked up to you and asked you to sit with me and you just agreed to it? Did he have you here making guard dogs for the castle?”

“At first, but he didn’t need many guardians for it.” Hector answered, leaning over to give the pot a sniff. “We’ve been making night creatures since then. I don’t really care much for meat in my food.”

“You try to bring this beef back to life and I  _ will  _ attack you again.” Trevor scowled. “What do you mean making night creatures? They’re a natural species like bears and rabbits. Nobody makes them. They just are. Soup’s for me. You want something else you can make it when I’m done.”

“Not all of them.” Hector backed away looking slightly annoyed. “Dracula needed an army to help him bring humanity under his rule. Isaac and I are helping him accomplish that.”

Trevor hesitated over the pot in the middle of adding some more sliced carrots. “You’re helping him kill people?” He turned back slightly. “You do know you’re one of the humans he wants to fucking murder right?”

“He wouldn’t hurt me.” Hector shook his head. “I’m aware of my species but that doesn’t mean I particularly like what I am. Humans aren’t capable of governing themselves. Not without stomping all over each other. Under Dracula’s rule things will be better.”

“Under his rule things’ll be dead.” Trevor returned to his cooking, stirring the pot slowly. “You can’t honestly believe he’s going to let any of us live. His army has been murdering everyone from here to the border. Women and children, not just the men. Whole villages are being wiped out. How the fuck can you help him?! What is he holding your family hostage or something?”

Hector eyed the door, debating whether or not Dracula would mind if he left Belmont to cook alone. Upon deciding that he probably shouldn’t let one of Dracula’s enemies wander around unguarded, he swallowed. “It isn’t…” His voice was soft. “It isn’t like that. He’s my friend. The only one I ever had.”

“Your friend?!” Trevor whipped around to face him but he was at a loss what to say. He gaped for several moments until the steam at his back reminded him of the food he was making. “Well your  _ friend _ is working really hard at murdering a hell of a lot of innocent people. If you’re going to help him you ought to at least do them the courtesy of looking them in the eye when your creatures rip open their bellies.”

The cooking continued in silence after that. There seemed nothing more he could say that might have a chance at getting through to the madman at his back. Thankfully he at least didn’t seem inclined to do more than stand there staring creepily. The soup finished cooking and Trevor took it to the table to eat. 

“There’s more left. Eat some if you want it.” He invited. 

“I don’t really like eating meat.” Hector replied softly from the doorway where he’d taken up residence.

“Suit yourself.” Trevor shrugged and dug in. He might be stuck in Dracula’s castle with at least one crazy human and who knew how many monsters, but starving wasn’t going to help that. Plus while he was gathering the silverware to eat with he tucked a knife into his clothing. It made him feel better to be armed, even with something that probably wouldn’t do much against the demons in this place. 


	12. Blood

The leftovers of Trevor’s stew ended up in the cold cabinet. He decided the cold part was just more bullshit vampire magic, although it lacked the feeling of having anything beyond the mundane. Now that his belly was full he wanted to find his clothes and his weapons and get out of here. Coming here had obviously been some kind of fever induced mistake. 

“So where is Dracula keeping my stuff?” Trevor asked as he leaned back in his chair. Though he’d never admit it, having a full stomach and being warm at the same time felt really good. Without an immediate threat it would have been easy to relax in this place. 

“I don’t know.” Hector shrugged and winced when Belmont looked like he didn’t care for the answer. “I don’t!” He held up his hands. “I’ve only been here a year or so and I’ve only seen a few rooms. The kitchen, my workroom, and my bedchambers and bathroom are the only places I go. Well, and the throne room. And sometimes the great hall when I feel like walking outside.

“Alright then, take me to your workshop.” Trevor decided. Maybe he could find something more useful on the way there.

“I can take you there but you won’t like it.” Hector grimaced, remembering something unpleasant. 

The two of them walked out with Hector in the lead. Trevor followed behind but not too closely. He didn’t trust the lapdog with half a face, and Caesar kept bouncing around the man’s legs. It would have been adorable if the dog wasn’t a walking corpse. 

The maze of halls they walked through felt haunted, like there might be eyes lurking in the walls or peering at them from every darkened corner. The back of Trevor’s neck kept prickling like he was about to be attacked, yet in all the times he looked over his shoulder he saw nothing. When he caught a whiff of rotting corpse the sensation only grew worse, especially since Hector didn’t seem to pay it any attention. 

The source of the rot became apparent in Hector’s workshop. A pile of corpses had been left near a table in the middle of the room. Hector walked to the table and gestured to the room at large. 

“This is it.” He explained. “I’m not sure why you wanted to see it. I told you that you wouldn’t like it.” He seemed slightly offended by the way Trevor was holding his nose. 

“How the fuck can you work with that stench?!” Trevor fanned his face but it did him no good. “What are they here for? I thought you said you brought animals back to life?”

“You consider the night creatures animals, I assume.” Hector answered, running his fingers over the hammer he’d left on the table. “So when I bring them back, they are animals.”

“They?” He looked at the table and then the pile again as realization dawned and suddenly Trevor Belmont felt very sick. “You’re the one the corpses are for. You take them and you turn them into night creatures?”

“Even a forge master can’t create something from nothing.” Hector explained calmly. “Dracula needs an army and the creatures I make are very loyal. They’d never turn on me, or him. I give them a new life, better than the old.”

“You turn them into fucking monsters!” Trevor shouted. “You make them into the things that murdered them! You’re helping wipe out the human race and you call it better!?”

Pulling out the knife he’d stolen, Trevor attacked. Taking out Hector would mean stopping the night horde from replenishing its numbers. It would give humanity a fighting chance. At the moment that was the best he could hope to accomplish. Impacting the bed knocked the wind out of Hector who was bent backward over the surface. Trevor pressed down on him from above, knife aimed squarely at the man’s throat. Hector had his arm up to block it but Trevor threw his body weight onto it. The knife pressed inexorably down until it nicked the skin, a bead of blood welling up and then…

And then Trevor was hauled up and away by a huge hand that had clamped onto his shirt. The fabric ripped as he struggled, dropping him to the ground. Trevor whipped around and the knife flashed again, this time at his new attacker. The metal bent on impact and Trevor realized why he hadn’t heard anyone approach. 

“I cannot let you kill my forge master.” Vlad intoned, plucking the knife out of his hand and letting him drop to the ground. “Are you alright, Hector?”

The man in question sat up, rubbing his throat slowly. “It’s just a cut. I’ll be fine.”

Hector missed the flash of hunger in Vlad’s eyes that vanished almost immediately. Trevor didn’t. 

“Better watch out. He might decide you smell like lunch.” Trevor pointed out as he pulled his shirt straight.

“Hector, in the future it might be best if you don’t show Belmont around the castle.” Vlad remarked, ignoring Trevor’s dig at him. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think he’d steal the silverware.” Hector stood up and dusted himself off. He shook his head slightly and retrieved his hammer. “I’ll get back to work if you don’t need me to watch him any more.”

Vlad nodded. “Come along Belmont.” And strode from the room. 

Trevor followed because it seemed unlikely he’d be allowed a second shot. However he watched the halls, trying to remember the route. “Where are you taking me? A dungeon?”

“If I wanted to kill you I’d have let your injury do that.” Vlad answered. “I’m taking you back to your chambers.”

“This isn’t how I got here.” Trevor pointed out, wondering if the old bat had finally lost his mind completely. “My room was that way.”

“It was.” Vlad nodded. “Now it is this way. I’ll be moving it again once we arrive. Hector has important work to do for me. I do not want you interrupting him with threats of death again.”

“You can move the rooms?” Trevor looked around and grumbled. “Fucking vampire bullshit.”

“This particular bullshit as you call it is unique to my castle.” Vlad sounded slightly amused. “You won’t see it any other place on Earth.”

“Lucky me.” Trevor rolled his eyes. “Are you just gonna keep me in a bedroom here then? You know I won’t stay your prisoner forever. Sooner or later I will escape, or find where you sleep and kill you.”

“In all the centuries your family has been hunting me, none of you ever found my resting chamber.” Vlad remarked, turning slightly back. “And only one of you has ever seen it.”

“If none of us ever found it then how could we see it?” Trevor pointed out. “Maybe you should go have a bit of your friend back there. I think you’re losing it, fang face.”

“He didn’t find my chamber.” Vlad answered impassively. “I showed it to him. Now, here is your bedroom. The kitchen is there.” He pointed. “I’ll keep it near so you won’t get lost. I realize you’ll be exploring the castle regardless so allow me to caution you. The guardians of my castle will not attack you first but they will defend themselves. And should you find the garden where the Venus man-trap grows, I suggest you leave quickly. Everything there is deadly to humans. Even a Belmont won’t last long.”

“I thought those were extinct.” Trevor hadn’t expected to hear a name like that. 

“They are, except for mine.” Vlad answered. “I keep several plants that do not survive outside my castle. All of the dangerous ones are in that garden. The door is marked with a prominent skull so there is no mistaking it.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Trevor pressed. “Why are you keeping me alive? You must have some reason. If it’s not to show me off then what is it?”

Vlad finally turned to face him, watching him carefully. It seemed to Trevor that he was looking for something, but he couldn’t imagine what it might be. Whatever it was Vlad nodded very slightly and then, rather than answering the question, ported away leaving Trevor alone in the hall. 


	13. Portraits

“Crazy bastard.” Trevor muttered and shook his head. 

Clearly he’d have to get answers on his own. Meanwhile he wanted to find some clothes besides what he’d been dressed in, especially shoes, and the Belmont library. It had to be in this damn death trap somewhere, he reasoned, and if it was here that meant it could be found. It was just a matter of searching the place until he stumbled across it. 

“If I were going to hide a library full of things that could kill me…” Trevor spoke aloud in soft tones as he walked the hall, his hand trailing over the smooth wall to his right. “I’d put it… in the cellar.” It seemed a solid plan. Of course given who he was trying to read, it might well be in the attic but since his life didn’t seem to be in immediate danger he decided to start at the bottom and work his way up. 

In order to do that he first had to find said bottom, which was more difficult than one might imagine. The castle seemed to follow certain rules, but Trevor could feel the rooms changing location and probably layout as he walked through them. 

There was always an exit, but sometimes that was the same way he’d come inside. Several times he entered a room, found nothing there of interest nor anywhere else to go, and left only to find himself in a completely different hall from the one that had been here before. It was not only irritating, but it also made forming a mental map of the areas he’d already explored impossible. 

“How the fuck did you find anything in this place?!” The biting question wasn’t directed at any ancestor in particular but all the ones who’d claimed to have come here. “I thought we were supposed to have special navigation powers in the castle or something?!”

The only answer he got was a grinding of gears as something else changed. Cursing under his breath, Trevor kept on walking. The carpets were easier on his bare feet than a forest floor, at least. There were no spines or hard branches to stab him in the soles. 

No aggressive wildlife either, come to think of it. The thought was an odd one. In all the stories he’d read, his ancestors had to fight their way through the castle guardians, hundreds of them, in order to get anywhere. Yet now nothing challenged him no matter where he went. 

As soon as he realized that, Trevor walked over to one of the suits of armor guarding the hall he was in. He knocked on the chest piece and found it hollow. “Huh. Nobody home.” 

Upon lifting the visor to be sure, a pair of glowing yellow eyes stared back at him. Trevor jumped back like he’d been burned, instinctively reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. But the undead knight only dropped its visor back into place and settled down with a few barely there movements. 

“Not gonna attack huh?” Trevor mused, walking slowly away though he continued to eye the knights on the walls now. “Good to know.” Not that he trusted that attitude to continue if he went someplace the master of the castle didn’t want him to go, like for instance the Belmont library. But if he found that he’d have all the weapons and armor he could want anyway. 

Traveling down a flight of stairs, which seemed to be in the right direction, Trevor noticed more and more little piles of not-quite-human bones on the sides of the carpeted steps. This time he didn’t bother testing them. Undoubtedly if they were given the order they’d reform into some kind of miniature demon skeleton thing out of his nightmares but until that happened he didn’t see a reason to care. 

There was more dust in this area as well, which seemed strange in a castle cleaned by supernatural means. Why skip any part of it? Was this section just unused? Trevor couldn’t help but be curious. His father would have given his eye teeth to be able to have this kind of unfettered look at the inside of the castle. For that matter all of his ancestors would have done the same which made him want to at least have a good look around before he got himself killed. At least that’d be one thing he could say he did that none of them had ever done. 

At the base of the stairs Trevor was confronted by only a single door, heavier and more primitive looking than the rest. It felt as if it led to an older part of the castle because it looked as if it would be at home in any human one. This one had to have been here for a hell of a lot longer than the Belmont library. He thought about turning away but he couldn’t help but wonder what sort of chaotic place would be so important to the vampire that he would keep it here, but not important enough to keep it as immaculate as the rest of the castle.

The doors opened with a soft squeak, more than he’d heard from anywhere else in the castle. Immediately it made him like this area. At least here if someone snuck into the room you’d get some warning. The rest of the castle always seemed to be eerily quiet. 

Inside the room the space felt almost mundane, which made it stand out in a castle full of monsters and magic. A desk with a tilted surface rested against one wall, the surface strewn with what seemed to be rejected sketches by what had been a rather good artist. Along the left wall a bookcase stood with multiple hand bound volumes filling its shelves. The topmost held a couple of small portraits as well, surrounded by a gold frame. 

Taking one of those down, Trevor was surprised to see a familiar face. The timing was different from the portrait that had once hung in the Belmont hold, but he had no doubt it was Leon Belmont. Seeing that face, someone he knew even if only through stories, actually brought a few tears to his eyes. How long had it been since he’d seen anything familiar? He placed it back in its spot carefully and took the other. 

Though he didn’t know her face, he decided he liked this one as well. She reminded him of some of his family members in the eyes, not by the color but the way she looked out of the portrait. His mother had looked like that sometimes, when looking at his father if she thought the man couldn’t see her. Trevor had always liked catching her at it. He smiled slightly and replaced the portrait. 

It was at this point that he realized just how weird his find was. Why on earth would a portrait of his ancestor and a random presumably human woman be sitting on a shelf in Dracula’s castle? Thinking that maybe the books would help Trevor retrieved one and opened it.

Immediately he blushed, his eyes wide as saucers, and slammed the sketchbook closed. “What the f…Wait...” Opening it again he put a hand over the man’s body where he was apparently enjoying some enthusiastically received rope work. His eyes flicked from the portrait of Leon Belmont to the sketch in the book. 

“Oh what the actual fuck?!” Trevor almost tore the page turning to another one. This one featured Leon with a mouth-full of a dark haired man whose face couldn’t be seen. Only a few long locks fell into the view sketched out. Another rapid fire flick of several pages revealed Leon in various poses both alone and with that same dark haired, all of which Trevor tried desperately to forget. 

The final straw came when he got to nearly the last page. His ancestor was in a familiar looking throne room seated in the lap of that same companion. Both men seemed to be having a great deal of fun. What really threw Trevor off even more was the fact that the dark haired man had his fangs buried in Leon’s throat. 

A thud as the book hit the floor brought Trevor back enough to quickly grab it and put it back on the shelf. The room didn’t have a fireplace or he would have used it to burn that book. As he was debating that, he was struck by a terrible thought. 

“Are these all…” Snatching up another volume, he opened it and quickly scowled while setting it aside. A third and fourth volume, each taken at random from places on the shelf, provided more opportunities for trauma for the last Belmont. Some of them involved a young woman as well which he assumed to be the woman in the small painting. 

At this point Trevor decided he’d had enough of this entire room and stormed out. If he ever found his way back here with a flint he’d make short work of all of those books. In the meantime he just wanted to find the damn library and get the Morning Star back so he could kill Dracula and maybe see if it could destroy memories as easily as it destroyed vampires.


	14. Gallery

The castle seemed to have decided not to torment him with any more pornographic paintings, but Trevor remained irritated when he suddenly got the feeling a vampire was close. Hardly a surprise given the location. Walking away would have been the smart thing to do, but nobody had ever accused Trevor of being particularly quick. With the exception of his mother but he wasn’t sure he ought to count her opinion. In any case he was far too upset about the drawings he’d found to walk away so he turned down the corridor that seemed to lead in the right direction. 

The door he came across this time was more in keeping with the rest of the castle, but he noticed the handles were properly polished. When he shoved it open there was no dust or any other sign of neglect that he could make out. The room was well lit too, if somewhat softly so. It appeared to be more hallway that room, being narrow and long and with a single door at the other side, yet the wall to his left had small sets of curtains set up along one side. 

Each was only about the height of a man, which in this place seemed almost tiny. Trevor had spotted numerous windows that an entire home could pass through without touching the edges. It only now struck him as strange that a vampire’s castle should have windows of any sort, much less huge ones. 

In this case the curtains all had a small tug rope next to them as well. They were all shut except for one at the far end of the hall which seemed to have a painting behind it, though at this angle it was impossible to tell what the painting might hold. Trevor narrowed his eyes, debating checking this one out. If he got another eyeful of Leon in some compromising position he was going to start taking this castle apart brick by brick. 

Just as he decided it wasn’t worth it and was about to turn back, the door behind him locked. He ran to it, kicking and beating the thing, but it was made of some very solid wood. No way was he getting through that without a weapon of some kind. 

Instantly he ran to the first set of curtains and tore them open. If there was another painting here, maybe he could break the frame and find a nail to… do something he hadn’t thought of yet. 

The curtains parted without a sound, and Trevor was left staring. What they’d hidden was indeed a painting and it was Leon Belmont that stared back at him. But this time… Leon stood in a formal pose, a sword held with its point to the floor in one hand. In the other he held the head of a basilisk painted so realistically Trevor almost wanted to avert his eyes for fear of being turned to stone. Gore dripped from the head but didn’t quite touch the knightly robe Leon wore over his shining silver armor. 

What captured Trevor’s attention the most though was the face. Leon was smiling, his eyes full of warmth and joy. The painting hung on the wall such that Leon’s eyes were just slightly above Trevor’s own, and he realized now that it was likely life sized. He reached out to touch the paint, fingers feeling out the curves that formed Leon’s eyes, slightly crinkled in a captured moment of happiness. 

Who could possibly have painted something so exquisitely done was less pressing a matter to Trevor than why such a painting was here in the first place. The porn, at least, he understood the reason for even if he wanted to gouge out his own eyes over having seen it. This didn’t seem to have anything of the kind behind it. 

The locked door momentarily forgotten, Trevor went on to the next portrait. Beneath the second set of curtains he found a similar life sized portrait of a man who strongly resembled the woman whose picture he’d found in that other room. It had to be her son, and this man carried Leon’s bright blue eyes in a slightly different shade as well. His expression seemed to be one of fear, however, or uncertainty at best.

The third set hastily pulled open revealed what had to be Leon’s grandson. Trevor spent only a few moments staring at this one’s open scowl. The face was one he’d want to return to later, but he had more immediate concerns. 

Every step felt heavy as he walked to the far end of the gallery past a dozen more closed sets of curtains. The one set he didn’t have to open seemed to be offering him a view of the painting beneath. 

The oil still seemed wet on this one as Trevor gazed into a reverse of his own features. Unlike the portrait of Leon, painted Trevor gazed out with a harsh expression on his face, the contours of every scar sharp. The artist had given him a set of clothes he’d never owned, something resembling the knight’s armor that his family had possessed once. Trevor himself hadn’t seen it since he was a boy, had in fact assumed it was lost in the fire along with everything else. 

Stepping back from the painting, Trevor looked back the way he’d come. Was this a chronicle of his family’s lineage? He couldn’t think of any other explanation and yet that didn’t explain anything at all. There was no reason for his family’s worst enemy to keep their likenesses this way, much less devote what had to have been a considerable amount of time studying them all to be able to paint them so well. Plus they were kept here, in an obviously well tended room made only for displaying their portraits. 

The fact that his own portrait had obviously been painted within the last few days was an entirely new level of creepy as well. Obviously it had to be Dracula himself doing the portraits. No one else would have been around for so many generations of his family’s existence and nobody else would’ve wanted to make these things either. Although why Dracula himself seemed to want to do it was a mystery as well.

Trevor shook his head and continued on towards the other door. The vampire was obviously mad and that was hardly news. Whatever his unsettling obsession with Belmonts, it was going to end with Dracula himself. At this point he was just grateful the hall wasn’t a gallery of nudes.

Leaving that room behind, Trevor noticed the vampire’s presence had vanished from his senses once more. Had Dracula wanted him to find that room or had it merely been coincidence? A few paintings might hold his interest momentarily but it was not going to deter him from his ultimate goal. 

“Maybe he was trying to distract me from how perverted he is.” Trevor muttered. “Fucking vampires.”

At this point he was getting tired, and thirsty too. The injury he’d received before coming here was well tended and on its way to healing but that still left him somewhat subpar. On top of that he didn’t seem to be accomplishing anything by wandering the halls. As far as he could tell he was no closer to the Belmont library than he had been when he started. Instead he’d found nude sketches that were now burned into his eyes and discovered that Dracula was a very dedicated stalker of his family. Neither of these things helped him kill the fucker, although it did fuel his motivation to do so. 

“How about the kitchen?” He shouted that at his feet for lack of any better idea. “Can you lead me there without subjecting me to more twisted horrors?”

Apparently in response, the castle shifted and groaned. Trevor heard a click behind himself and whipped around. Instinct said expect something dangerous. What he got was an open door leading to a study. Inside, a fire crackled in the hearth and Dracula rested in a chair facing the flames.

“That’s not the kitchen.” Trevor muttered. 


	15. History

“Did you think it would be?” Dracula’s voice was slightly muffled since he hadn’t bothered getting up nor facing his guest. 

“Have you been enjoying this little show of yours?” Trevor demanded, marching around the chair since the vampire couldn’t be bothered to get off his arse. “I assume it was you making all those filthy drawings of my ancestor. Why the hell would you show me something like that? You think I want to see my umpteenth great grandfather’s ass?! I don’t know who that other guy was but I hope he choked on Leon’s blood!”

Dracula made a sound that was almost laughter at that, actually looked up at him for the first time. “He did. Or he might as well have. It would have been…” Stopping himself suddenly, he turned away once again. “I didn’t instruct the castle to show you those rooms. At times it has a mind of its own.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Ignore it.”

“Ignore it? I may never be able to get those damn images out of my head.” Trevor growled. “Why the fuck are they even here?! And why do you have a gallery of my family? And when the fuck did you do that damn painting of me?!”

“I chose not to throw them out. And I added your portrait because…” The vampire trailed off slightly and his brow creased. “To complete the series, I suppose. You are the last. It seemed a shame not to put you with the rest.” He sank back into the overstuffed chair, eyes on the fire again. 

“You’re skipping around the point. Why the fuck would you have a series of portraits of my family in your castle?” Trevor pressed. “Come on. You’re in the mood to answer questions. One more won’t hurt. We’ve been trying to kill you for centuries and you’ve been hanging pictures of us up on your walls? Come on. I’m not fucking stupid. You’ve got porn of my ancestor and somebody that looks like he could be your son. A whole library of it.”

“My son?” Vlad laughed derisively. “My son looks nothing like me. That was not my son in those sketches, Belmont.”

“Good god in heaven, if you tell me it was your father or your uncle or something-” Trevor began.

“No.” Vlad turned to look at him again, seeming as if he were studying Trevor’s face rather than considering his answer. “It was me. That is simply how I looked then.”

“Still not stupid, vampire. Your kind doesn’t age.” Trevor snapped. “Whoever it was better be fucking dead now because if he isn’t I’m gonna kill him when I finish with you.”

“ _ Time _ doesn’t age us.” Vlad answered, rising slowly to his feet without talking his eyes off Trevor. “That does not mean we don’t change. It simply takes something entirely different to do so.”

With the vampire out of his chair and himself weaponless, Trevor suddenly realized what a bad position he was in. He didn’t have anything stronger than a kitchen knife, which suddenly seemed woefully inadequate as he stared up at Dracula’s face. “Like what?” He swallowed the lump in his throat.

“Experience.” Finger and thumb lifted Trevor’s chin slightly as Vlad regarded him. “You have Leon’s eyes. Did you know that?” A hint of curiosity colored his voice. “I noticed it when I was painting you. Different brows. Stronger jaw. Leon was quite beautiful... But you have his eyes.”

“Gee thanks.” Trevor snapped. He’d tried to pull away and realized he couldn’t. The vampire had to be able to hear the way his heart was pounding, but it didn’t mean he had to listen to it. “Planning on gouging them out?”

“No…” Vlad let his hand drop, releasing the hunter.

“Then what are you planning?” What was meant to be a demand came off weaker than he wanted. Trevor’s eyes hardened. “You’ve had me here for days. You stripped me of weapons but you haven’t killed me nor tried to bite me as far as I can tell. If you enthralled me you did a shitty job. So what the hell do you want with me?! If you’re planning on killing me I wish you’d just get it over with.”

“I’ve never wanted to kill you.” As he returned to his seat Dracula answered him softly. “Any of you. That was always the Belmont goal, not mine. Didn’t you ever wonder why I never teleported the castle onto the hold? Or opened a distance mirror into the manor and slaughtered all of you while you slept? Why I never so much as directed a rat at the Belmont manor? I’ve known where it was built since Leon laid the first foundation for that ragged little hut he called a home. Long before he had access to the kind of magic that could even tell him I’d arrived, I knew exactly where to find him.”

This time Trevor was left silent. Somehow he’d never even considered that question. As far as he knew there were no special protections on the manor. They would have activated when his family was murdered, after all. There’d been nothing in place to protect any of them. 

“I could just as easily have set it alight myself and killed all of your ancestors before you were a gleam in your father’s eye.” Vlad continued. “But I didn’t. And none of you ever think to wonder why.” Shaking his head, he gave a slight snort. 

“Alright then. Why?” Trevor asked, folding his arms. “You give a great speech and now I’m curious so tell me. Why didn’t you ever do any of that stuff? If it’s so easy then why not just drop your castle on us and finish us off? Does it have something to do with the paintings?”

“The paintings are… a by-product.” Dracula answered. “What have you been told about me?”

“Besides you being a homicidal asshole that murders people for giving him funny looks but insists on walking around looking like a damn vampire?” Trevor deadpanned. “I was told you killed Leon and his wife and that you’re the reason he started our family being hunters. He hated you for killing her and he decided that if he couldn’t end your miserable life then one of his ancestors would do it.”

The vampire considered this description for several moments before he finally decided how to respond. “I suppose I can’t say it’s entirely inaccurate but there are quite a few things missing.”

“Yeah, like you chewing on Leon’s neck and filling whole books with naked sketches of him.” Trevor snorted. 

“If it makes you feel any better, I never touched him.” Dracula leaned back in his chair slightly. “Not like that, at least. By the time I propositioned him, Leon was already quite happily married and refused to betray his wife no matter how I attempted to persuade him.”

A grin slowly spread across Trevor’s face. “He turned you down flat huh? Good for him.” He laughed heartily. “What I wouldn’t pay to see the look on your face! Is that why you hated him? Because he wouldn’t sleep with you?”

“Whoever said I hated him was a liar.” Dracula answered, now looking rather sour. “But yes, he did turn me down. Repeatedly. We had a number of.. encounters over the years, but he remained very…  _ Catholic _ .” The word was laced with disapproval and old annoyance.

“Bet that just burned you up too, huh.” Trevor scowled. “Couldn’t get in his pants so you decided to murder his wife, is that it? Guess the tables have turned now, huh asshole?! If I had Morning Star right now I’d kill you just for him, you son of a-”

Dracula’s fingers nearly encircled Trevor’s throat. The grip cut off his sentence along with his supply of oxygen. Trevor tore at them with his fingers before his training kicked in and he grabbed the vampire’s arm to support himself. Feet planted firmly on Vlad’s chest, Trevor kicked as hard as he could. The grip released and he fell to the ground, coughing even as he scrambled backwards to try and find some sort of weapon. 

When he got up on one knee with a fire poker in hand, the vampire was gone. Trevor sagged back against the fireplace rubbing his throat slowly. 


	16. Strange Inklings

Several minutes later after Trevor had a chance to catch his breath and his throat was feeling slightly less sore, he stabbed the poker into the floor. It gave him something to push off to get to his feet, and it made him feel a little better since he hadn’t gotten to stab Vlad with the thing. 

“Fucking vampires!” He spat the curse as he marched out of the room. With nowhere in particular to look for shouting at the castle, he chose the floor again. “I’m going to the fucking kitchen and then I want to see my family library and you are not gonna stop me with switching around the rooms and showing me shit like those notebooks!” 

His voice dropped into a grumble as he strode down the halls. “Fucking pervert vampire and his nudie drawings! I swear when I’m done dusting him I’m burning that room to the fucking ground if I have to go through this damned place room by room.” His heavy footsteps punctuated each phrase, and they were accented by rumblings elsewhere in the castle which Trevor ignored. They were too far away to bother him now and he had bigger things to worry about. 

The kitchen was not so direct to find as he hoped, but it didn’t take as long as he’d feared either. Best of all the castle seemed to have given up on showing him any of the history he didn’t care to see. He ran into no more weird porn stashes, instead stumbling into the kitchen fairly quickly. It actually took him a second to realize that he’d found it since he’d expected the place to fight him again. 

“About damn time.” Trevor muttered as he walked around gathering enough food for a simple meal. This time he didn’t bother cooking, sticking instead with a hunk of bread, some meat, and a smaller hunk of cheese washed down with water from the tap he still didn’t quite trust. Unfortunately there didn’t seem to be any other source of water, and he could sense no magic behind the contraption which was both reassuring and concerning in a different way. 

The food settled his stomach, but it could do nothing for his mind. Taking care of the body was a necessary part of hunting, and one he’d ignored for a long time. Now that he was moving around he was starting to feel it, all those years of drinking and doing fuck all to really stop anything. Sure he’d trained so he wasn’t helpless, but it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. If the vampire had been telling the truth before then he knew why too. 

He needed to get Morning Star back.

This time Trevor tucked some extra food wrapped up in napkins into his pockets since he didn’t have anything else to carry it in. At least he wouldn’t have to come back here for a little while. Water would be the biggest issue but that he could get from any tap he came across.

With those provisions tucked away, he left the kitchen again. Since the castle could rearrange itself at will, sticking to any particular side would do him no good. He could walk in circles for eternity that way. His footsteps faltered as he thought that over and considered his options. 

“Got any tips for me?” The question was directed skyward, the sarcasm intended for whatever ancestor happened to be watching him blunder about in this godforsaken place. “Because I got fuck all.”

Arms crossed, Trevor let himself fall back against the wall. “Damn this castle!” He shouted and kicked the wall behind himself. Since it was made of stone it didn’t dent, but he tried. “And the vampire that built it! Who the fuck makes rooms able to move around anyway!? How the hell am I supposed to find anything?!”

Four hours of otherwise fruitless searching later, Trevor found the wine cellar. He hadn’t really intended to end up here. Although he’d begun speculating about the tavern he’d left, he really had intended to remain away from alcohol until he killed Dracula, which he fully expected to die from even if he succeeded. 

To thus be handed his own personal demons on a silver platter was too much to pass by. Giant wooden barrels lined the walls four high, each of them proving filled with something when Trevor gave them a nudge with his boot and they refused to move. Some of them supported healthy colonies of cobwebs too which suggested a vintage older than many cities. 

The only guilt he felt when he rolled one onto its side so it didn’t spill everywhere and broke open the wood was to wonder if he’d ever find his library before Dracula returned to finish the job he’d begun on Trevor’s throat, but the vampire would have already returned if he intended that, Trevor reasoned. So getting absolutely plastered was going to cost him nothing but time. 

_ And perhaps,  _ a deeply hidden inner voice suggested as he plunged his hand into the liquid for lack of a cup,  _ it wouldn’t be so bad if he never woke up from this binge.  _

Very quickly, the strange lights in the place began to appear doubled and the distant upper reaches of the ceiling became completely unfathomable. Much as he might peer into the dimly lit recesses of yet another cathedral ceiling, he couldn’t quite tell what was shadow and what might be something more. At time he thought he saw movement but every time he checked, he could see nothing. 

“Fuck it.” He murmured, pointedly ignoring it the next time to get another scoop of wine. 

Before long Trevor Belmont was absolutely gorged on wine. So much so that he didn’t really want any more which he couldn’t recall ever happening. He staggered away from the barrel, pausing once to belch, and laughed drunkenly to himself. At this point he didn’t recall much of  _ anything _ which was exactly the state he preferred to be in. 

At some point during his meanderings away from the cellar he began looking for a place to rid himself of some of the already digested wine, and very soon found one of the castle’s many bathrooms. Thus relieved, he exited and stood, swaying slowly, in the middle of the hall. Finding a place to sleep would be nice, but he couldn’t help feeling like he was close to the library. A strange sensation inside him was tugging him to the left because he was  _ certain _ the Belmont library lay in that direction. Before he’d even consciously decided to give it a shot, his feet turned left and the rest of him was forced to follow.

He tripped within a few steps, stumbling into the knight’s armor. The whole thing went down in a heap with him, and he wasted several moments trying to disengage with the straps and get himself back on his feet. The banging sounded loud enough to be heard on the next continent and he was sure Dracula would show up and stop him, but the vampire never came. Soon he was shuffling forward once more, fighting back the occasional yawn as he made his way down the hall.

“Gotta find Morning Star.” He reminded himself every few steps with words muttered under his breath like a nearly silent mantra. 

Passing through the halls, whose light was dim by human standards and thus seemed designed to invite sleep, Trevor kept his gaze focused as much as possible straight ahead of himself. He glanced only occasionally at any of the doors he passed, knowing they weren’t the one he sought. 

At last, blinking rapidly to try and focus, he reached his destination. He pushed through a heavy wooden door and it was as if he’d stepped back in time. The Belmont library looked exactly as it had back in the hold, from the banners hanging off the walls to the artifacts and books laid out on the shelves that stretched below and above the entrance. Trevor had to turn around and look back to make sure he was really still in the castle because aside from what lay outside the entrance he couldn’t see anything different. 

Except the dust, or rather the lack thereof. 

Ever since the Belmonts had been all but wiped out, there’d been no one to tend to the library. It hadn’t been dusted in over a decade. On the rare occasions Trevor had visited it before, he’d always hated how dusty it looked. His family had kept it pristine, as it was now. 

An unexpected well of tears sprang up in his eyes and he walked slowly down the flight of stairs to find the index on its pedestal just where it should be. The mark in the book remained where he’d left it on his last visit years before. Trevor opened it again, tracing with his finger the listing on water demons.

Leaving it behind he walked over to the nearest shelf. The relics looked the same, but surely they couldn’t be… Opening the glass door, he took out a vial of what was supposed to be holy water. But Dracula wouldn’t just leave this arsenal of weapons designed to maim and kill him lying here as the Belmonts intended. Nobody with half a brain would do something that foolish. The vial was the same but the contents had to have been switched out.

Yet he could feel something else now, similar to the tug that had led him here in the first place. It felt good, familiar like a taste of home. He followed it and wiped a few stray tears from his eyes so they wouldn’t fall on the books. At the end of that path he found something new. 

A glass case that hadn’t existed in the original hold had been set up on a pedestal at the end of a row of shelves. Inside it on what appeared to be a custom made wooden stand, Morning Star was coiled and hanging as it was meant to be, the belt that Trevor and countless other Belmonts had used to support it hung just below. Above the case, the portrait of Leon Belmont had been hung as if the patriarch were watching over his family’s finest creation. 

Trevor stared up at him, almost feeling as if he could talk to the painting and have someone hear what he said. But rather than speaking he lifted the glass and dropped it to the side, retrieving the weapon and hugging it to his chest. The tears returned, but they weren’t the only reason his vision was blurry. Trevor staggered back still clutching the whip until his legs caught on the edge of a couch which he then fell onto. 

Now that he’d achieved his goal he fell onto his side. Though he continued to cling to the whip like a squirrel with its favorite nut, his snores soon reverberated off the echoing walls of the Belmont library.


End file.
